By Ned Mersey, owner
2026 is a special year for us here. It is two hundred years since John Hawkins laid the first stone to build Bignor Park House, employing the services of neo-classical architect Henry Harrison, who won a Royal Society award for its design.
When John Hawkins bought Bignor Park in 1806 he was forty five and had spent much of his life touring Europe, collecting plants and studying geology and mineralogy. It was a further twenty years before the gothicised Carolean mansion that he acquired from Mrs Dorset was replaced with the present building.
In February 1828 Hawkins wrote to Mrs Josepha Lysons that the stables were not yet begun but that the new farmyard was finished and that ‘all these new buildings together with the formation of a new garden and shrubbery and about two miles of new road have occupied my attention for the last two years’. He goes on to say that his son, John Heywood Hawkins, had an ‘uncommon knowledge of architecture and a great aptitude for picturesque gardening’. The house was finished in 1829 and the parkland was landscaped by distinguished painter and landscape designer William Sawrey Gilpin, influenced by Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown.
The pleasure grounds certainly show some of the hallmarks of Gilpin’s style. This is supported by evidence from Constable’s watercolours of 1834 (see watercolour of house above). They were products of a visit to his brother George at Arundel, rather than the more famous visit to Petworth.
Hardly any information has been found for the period between John Heywood Hawkins’ acquisition of the property and the death of his sister, Mrs Johnstone, who inherited it from him in 1877. There were, however, changes to the pleasure grounds. A triangle of woodland was added in the southeast corner. At the point where the old approach via the avenue entered the park, the pleasure ground boundary was pushed outwards and downhill to ease the access into the Southeast Park.
Mrs Johnstone was succeeded by her son, G. H. Johnstone, in 1891. He may have been responsible for the pond in the pleasure grounds which appears on the Second Edition Ordnance Survey and the cottages were probably built just after the turn of the century. No description of the garden has been found before that in the 1924 sales particulars. At that time there were said to be ‘many fine specimen shrubs and trees bounding grass walks’. A summerhouse, Swiss Cottage, tennis court, flower garden, herb border, rose pergola and rock garden were present. The latter was probably at the east end of the pleasure grounds near the pond and there were mini-waterfalls. The garden buildings included two greenhouses, a vinery, bothy, potting shed and apple room. The last Johnstone owner, George Henry, lost no time in putting the property up for sale, since Trewithen was his preferred residence.
In 1926 the house and park was bought by my great-grandfather Charles Bigham, second Viscount Mersey (the first Viscount Mersey was the judge at the inquiries into the sinking of RMS Titanic and RMS Lusitania). The second Viscount was an author, traveller and collector. So it is also one hundred years since the Bigham family moved down here. In a future blog I will discuss the history of the house and park since it has been in our family.
Here is to the next two hundred years!
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